Abstract: Secrecy and
censorship involve norms about the control of information. Censorship of
communication in the modern sense is associated with large, complex urban
societies with a degree of centralized control and technical means of effectively
reaching a mass audience. It involves a determination of what can, and
can not, (or in the case of non-governmental efforts should and should
not) be expressed in light of given political, religious, cultural, and
artistic standards. The appearance of new communications (e.g., the printing
press or the Internet) technologies invariably create demands from conflicting
groups for greater openness and freedom of communication and demands for
greater control. Authorities try (often in vain) to control new techniques
of mass communication. Three major means of direct censorship (pre-publication
review, licensing and registration, and government monopolization) are
preventive in nature. Among democracies there is considerable variation
in censorship by content, media of communication, place, time period and
across societies. There are degrees of censorship and individual interests
are balanced against those of the community, however hard the latter is
to define. More common than outright prohibition, is the segmentation of
material involving time, place and person restrictions. Direct government
means of censorship must be considered separately from the availability
of resources to create and distribute information, the activities of private
groups and from informal censorship, including exclusion from sources of
information and self-censorship. In a democratic society secrecy and openness
exist in a continual dynamic tension.

1. Secrecy

Secrecy involves norms about
the control of information, whether limiting access to it, destroying it,
or prohibiting or shaping its’ creation. Secrecy is a general and fundamental
social process known to all societies. It can characterize interaction
at any level --from information an individual withholds, to secret rites
of passage of pre-industrial societies, to the secrets of contemporary
fraternal or business organizations, to state-held information on national
security. Secrecy norms are embedded in role relationships and involve
obligations and rights to withhold information, whether reciprocal or singular.
In preventing or restricting communication, the legally supported form
of censorship discussed here involves secrecy. Yet most secrecy (e.g.,
concealing information about a surprise party or aspects of one’s past)
does not involve formal law and the law involves secrecy in many other
ways.

In a democratic society secrecy
and openness reflect conflicting values and social needs and exist in an
ever-changing dynamic tension. Efforts to control information occur in
a rich variety of contexts. Norms about the concealment of information
and restrictions on communication ideally should be considered alongside
of their opposites –norms mandating the revelation of information and protecting
the freedom to know and communicate. Such norms may involve formal legal
rules such as Britain’s Official Secrets Act or the United States’ Freedom
of Information Act, non-legally binding formal policies such as a bank’s
refusal to reveal client information in the absence of a warrant or the
consumer information voluntarily provided on some product labels, or it
may involve informal expectations (close friends are expected not to reveal
shared secrets to outsiders but are expected to reveal certain personal
details to each other, such as true feelings about shared interests). The
correlates and consequences of such variation offer rich material for analysis
of the sociology of secrecy. This article reviews some selected social
forms, processes and consequences of secrecy and the law as applied to
censorship.

There is no widely agreed
upon general theoretical or conceptual framework for considering secrecy
issues. Given their social importance, there is a surprising lack of empirical
or explanatory research seeking to understand the contours of secrecy and
openness and why, and with what consequences, some forms have the support
of law. Nor has there been much research contrasting different forms of
legal secrecy.

Philosophers have considered
ethics, (Bok 1989) students of politics the implications for democracy,
(Shils 1956, Laquer 1985, Donner 19 Moynihan 1998) and other social scientists
have studied the patterning, processes and correlates of information control
rules across institutions and societies. (Simmel 1964, Goffman 1969, Tefft
1980, Wilsnak 1980, Scheppele 1988).The largest body of work is by legal
scholars emphasizing jurisprudence in often related areas such as the First
Amendment, obscenity and pornography, national security and executive privilege,
freedom of information, trade secrets, privacy and confidentiality, informant
identities, fraud and implied warranties, but generally ignoring explanation
or broader social processes.

2. Censorship2.1 Definitions and Differences

Censorship of communication
in the modern sense is associated with large, complex urban societies with
a degree of centralized control and technical means of effectively reaching
a mass audience. It involves a determination of what can, and can not,
(or in the case of non-governmental efforts should and should not) be expressed
to a broader audience in light of given political, religious, cultural,
and artistic standards. Censorship may involve withholding or editing existing
information, as well as preventing information from being created. In the
interest of keeping material from a broader audience, content deemed to
be offensive or harmful to public welfare is suppressed or regulated.

At the most general level
any rule, whether codified or customary, proscribing self-expression (e.g.,
nudity, hair styles, body adornment, language use) or the surveillance
and suppression of personal communication (phone, mail) can be seen as
a form of censorship. But our focus is primarily on state-supported efforts
to control mass communication justified by claims of protecting the public
interest, a form with profound implications for a democratic society.

Censorship assumes that certain
ideas and forms of expression are threatening to individual, organizational
and societal well-being as defined by those in power, or those involved
in a moral crusade and hence must be prohibited. It presupposes absolute
standards which must not be violated.

Much censorship assumes that
all individuals, not just children, are vulnerable and need protection
from offending material --whether pornography or radical criticism of existing
political and religious authority. Individuals can not be trusted to decide
what they wish to see and read or to freely form their own opinions.

Some censorship is largely
symbolic, offering a way to enhance social solidarity by avoiding insults
to shared values (e.g., a prohibition on flag burning). It may be a form
of moral education as with prohibitions on racist and sexist speech. Or
masquerading under high principles of protecting public welfare and morals,
it may simply involve a desire to protect the interests of the politically,
economically and religiously powerful by restricting alternative views,
criticism and delegitimating information.

Among the most common historical
rationales are political (sedition, treason, national security), religious
(blasphemy, heresy), moral (obscenity, impiety), and social (incivility,
irreverence, disorder). These of course may be interconnected. What they
share is a claim that the public interest will be negatively affected by
the communication. Censorship may be located relative to other legal forms
of secrecy. Censorship is justified by the protection of public welfare.
Rationales for other legally supported forms include: the protection of
private property for trade secrets; economic efficiency and fairness justifications
in common law disputes over secret information; the encouragement of honest
communication and/or protection from retaliation underling forms such as
lawyer-client and doctor-patient confidentiality, the secret ballot, and
a judge’s en camera ruling that the identity of an informant need not be
revealed; the protection of intimate relations in the case of spousal privilege;
the protection against improperly elicited confessions underlying the 5th
Amendment; the strategic advantage justification of sealed warrants and
indictments and the respect for the dignity and privacy of the person justification
for limits on the collection and use of personal information, whether involving
census, tax, library or arrest (as against conviction) records. There has
been little empirical research on whether, how well and with what consequences
and under what conditions these justifications are met.

Censorship is involuntary,
unlike a non-disclosure agreement that parties to a court settlement voluntarily
agree to. Censorship is unitary and non-discretionary --those subject to
it don’t have the option of communicating. In contrast the dyad of a confidential
professional relationship is discretionary for one party such as the client
and with the client’s permission, a doctor or lawyer may reveal confidential
information. Censorship seeks to withhold information from a mass audience,
rather than a given individual, as with controversial laws preventing revelation
of the identity of birth parents to adoptees. Where information exits but
censors prevent its’ release, it is intended to remain secret. In contrast
are legal secrets involving a natural cycle of revelation such as sealed
indictments and search and arrest warrants which become known when executed,
or an industry confidentiality agreement which may expire after a few years.
Censorship as a form of secrecy stands alone. It is not reciprocally and
functionally linked with its’ opposite –the legal mandate to reveal. For
example some civil grand juries compel testimony, but then promise to keep
it confidential.

Censorship is distinct from
government regulation of fraudulent or deceptive commercial communication,
which, unlike opinion and artistic expression, offers a clearer basis for
empirically determining truth, as with the Federal Trade Commission’s truth
in advertising requirements. Censorship is separate from restrictions on
communication based on copyright infringements where the issue is not secrecy,
but wrongful use. It is also distinct from editorial gate-keeping based
on other criteria such as quality, cost, demand, and relevance and in the
case of regulating public demonstrations and entertainment, public safety
and order. These can of course mask a desire to censor which would not
otherwise be legally supported.

Government legitimated censorship
is distinct from censorious outcomes that may result from the actions of
private groups. With the separation of church and state, only censorship
by government has the support of law. Non-governmental organizations such
as a religious group or social movement may prohibit, or attempt to dissuade,
members and others from producing, disseminating, or reading, listening
to or viewing material deemed objectionable. They may request editorial
changes, advocate boycotts and lobby school boards, libraries, book stores
and theaters to exclude such material.

When we look at social processes
of information control such as withholding information and selective presentation,
a form of censorship may sometimes be seen in propaganda, public relations
and advertising, as public and private sector actors pursue their interest
in creating favorable public impressions. Consider for example cigarette
companies withholding information on the health risks of smoking or tire
manufacturers not revealing the knowledge that their tires are unsafe.

2.2 Historical Development

Interest in the topic is
strongly related to developments in communications technology and current
events. In the modern period, continuing a trend that began with the printing
press, new technologies involving newspapers, mass produced books and magazines,
radio, telegraph, telephone, television, film, audio-cassettes, video,
fax and the internet, with their unprecedented ability to relatively easily,
inexpensively, and efficiently reach large numbers of people, have created
demands from conflicting groups for greater openness and freedom of communication
and greater control over it. The conflict and debate continues –note conflicts
over cable tv and efforts to regulate content and access to the internet
. Following the 1970s revelations in the Unites States about Watergate
and government spying and disruption of the civil rights and anti-war movements,
the ground breaking Freedom of Information Act was passed and the Supreme
Court strongly re-affirmed the principle of no prior restraint on the press
in the Pentagon Papers case (New York Times 1971).

As shown by the example of
Socrates who chose to die rather than to have his ideas censored (or Plato
who argued for censorship of the arts), the Romans who censored plays and
banished offending poets, Pope Gelasius in the fifth century who issued
the first papal list of prohibited books and the Inquisition beginning
in 1231 indicate, technology is hardly needed to spur censorship.

However demands for censorship
of religious and political ideas gained significant momentum in the 15th
century with the appearance of that most subversive of technologies (after
the invention of writing) --the printing press and the subsequent spread
of literacy. This broke the historic monopoly, however limited, of religious
and government institutions on communication with the masses. Authorities
tried and are still trying (often in vain) to control the new techniques
of mass communication. Later with the separation of church and state and
the increased power of the nation state, the reach of religious censorship
declined (e.g., prosecution for blasphemy) while political censorship gained
in importance, as did ideas of free expression which both countered and
provoked censorship.

In the West, cultural values
from the enlightenment elaborated on by Emanuel Kant and later J.S. Mill
and others stressed the importance of freedom of expression and openness
as central to finding the truth and for the stability and effectiveness
of democratic government. Individuals were optimistically assumed to be
responsible and rational beings who would reach the best conclusions, whether
involving normative or empirical truth, with full information and discussion.
Scientific ideals involving the ability to question and the freedom to
communicate fit here as well. For both government and science, visibility
or transparency is believed to be a central factor in accountability. Later
arguments emphasized that the psychological well-being and dignity of the
person were best served by the freedom to express one’s self and form one’s
own opinions. The argument based on personality has been stronger in Europe
than in the United States.

In the last half of the 20th
century, with the allies’ victory over fascist governments in WWII, the
fall of colonialism and the ending of the cold war, the cultural force
of democratic ideals involving freedom of inquiry and expression have grown
stronger. The principle of freedom of expression is contained in the First
Amendment to the United States Constitution, various United Nations documents,
European Constitutions and documents such as the European Convention on
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. In the United States, the Supreme
Court’s extension of the protection of the First Amendment to the states,
meant that numerous 19th and early 20th century state and local laws sanctioning
censorship were in principle unconstitutional, although in practice there
was often strong local support for such laws. This can be seen in struggles
over education (e.g., the Skopes “monkey” trial involving the teaching
of Darwinism in Tennessee in 1925), the routine denial of First amendment
rights to labor protestors up to the 1930s and civil rights protestors
through the 1960s and various local struggles over efforts to ban books
from libraries.

For western style pluralist
democracies, formal government censorship is the exception rather than
the rule, at least relative to absolutist authoritarian regimes which believe
they have the only truth (whether political, religious or moral) and do
not permit opposing views. In 2000, an annual survey of press freedom found
that 80% of the world’s population live in nations with less than a free
press. About one-third of the countries were considered to have free press
and broadcast systems and one-third had systems with strong government
control. (Freedom House 2000) An extreme example is from the government
of Iran where Salaman Rushdie’s book Satanic Verses was not only banned
for being blasphemous, but a reward was offered for Rushdie’s death.

Direct organizational means
of government censorship must be considered separately from the availability
of resources to create and distribute information and from informal means
of censorship, whether by government or private interests, including self-censorship.
While freedom of expression is a central component of the modern democratic
state, among democracies, there is considerable variation in censorship
by content, media of communication, place and time period. Constitutional
and legislative guarantees of the individual’s right to freedom of expression
are not absolute. In considering the social consequences of exercizing
a right, courts and legislatures balance it against other rights and community
needs and standards, such as the presence of the clear and present danger
Justice Holmes wrote of in (Schenck 1919). In the 1968 case of United States
v. O’Brien the Supreme Court held that local laws could regulate time,
place and manner of expression if done in a content neutral fashion, narrowly
tailored to serve substantial government interests and if alternative channels
of expression were left open.

There is often disagreement
about the social consequences of expression and how material should be
defined. Thus does exposure to sexually or violently explicit words and
images result in incitation and mimicry as some research claims (Itzin
1993, National Academy of Sciences 2000) or is it a safety valve and alternative
to expressing these, as others claim (Segal and McIntosh 1993, Hein 1993)?
Does the prevalence of violent and sexual content reflect or create public
demand? Can a reasonable consensus be reached on the distinction between
pornography and erotic art? Can heterogeneous, rapidly changing societies
with multiply porous borders meaningfully talk of community standards?

There has been little research
on variation in censorship. Political and religious expression has generally
received greater legal support than other forms such as sexual expression.
Printed matter has greater protection than other media. Film, live audience
presentations, the internet and cable tv have greater protection than conventional
television and radio where there is a scarcity of spectrum. Artistic expression
likely to raise the concerns of censors is generally ignored until it seeks
to reach a mass audience via the media or museums. Material appropriate
for adults may not be for children. Freedom of expression and access to
information generally have greater protection in the United States than
in Europe (e.g., greater tolerance of hate and other offensive speech,
and stronger freedom of information laws and protections against libel
suits).

2.3 Methods of Censorship

Three major means of direct
censorship are preventive in nature. Their goal is to stop materials deemed
unacceptable from appearing, or if that is not possible, from being seen
or heard by prohibiting their circulation:

Formal pre-publication review
requires would-be communicators to submit their materials for certification,
before publicly offering them. Soon after the invention of the printing
press, the Church required review and approval before anything could be
printed. However impractical and difficult to enforce in the contemporary
period, to varying degrees such “prior restraint” is found in authoritarian
societies, whether based on secular political (as in Cuba) or religious
doctrines (as in Iran and Afghanistan ) at the turn of the century. It
may be seen in democracies during emergency periods such as a war. There
may be formal review boards or censors may be assigned directly to work
at newspapers and broadcasting stations.

Government or interest group
monopolization of publication. Here the censors in effect are the producers
and are the only ones allowed to offer mass communication. For much of
its history the church was intertwined with government and in effect was
the only publisher. In the former Soviet Union the press and media were
government controlled and private means were prohibited.

Licensing and registration.
The means of production and transmission of information may be limited
to trusted groups who agree to self-censorship in light of prior restrictions.
In England in the 16th century printing was restricted to one official
company and all books had to be cleared by religious authorities prior
to publication. Four centuries later China required that all internet content
providers be registered with the government and abide by vague content
restrictions. Permission may be required to own a printing press, and in
some countries even ownership of a typewriter has been regulated.

Government subsidized programs
for the arts and journalism may come with political and cultural strings
attached. In the Soviet Union sponsorship of artists and writers associations
stressed “socialist realism”, a doctrine which held that art should serve
the purposes of the state. Those rejecting this were neither subsidized,
nor offered access to the public, and risked prosecution, as with Nobel
Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

In the United States in 1990
The National Endowment for the Arts, under prodding from Congress, required
that grant recipients sign a non-obscenity oath and that artistic merit
be determined by taking into account general standards of decency. A federal
court (Karen 1992) held that the decency clause was too broad and that
public funding of art was entitled to First Amendment protection.

A related aspect involves
an informal de-licensing in which individuals deemed to be untrustworthy
relative to the official standards are prohibited from communicating. For
example during the 1950s, Hollywood film writers suspected of communist
sympathies were prohibited from working in the industry via a blacklist.

A more subtle form of exclusion
involves denying access, as when government officials provide information
only to favored journalists believed to put an acceptable slant on their
reports. Even where the means of communication are freely available in
a legal sense, inequality in resources often means that many potential
voices go unheard. Journalist A.J. Leibling has observed, “freedom of the
press is assured to those who own one”. A related issue involves the trend
toward consolidation of newspapers, magazines, television and motion pictures
under fewer and fewer owners. Such monopolies are unlikely to express as
wide a spectrum of viewpoints as would be found with more decentralized
ownership. A related area of licensing can be seen in local requirements
that those wishing to hold a public demonstration obtain a permit. Given
Constitutional protections, such permits are usually granted in the United
States, although there may be restrictions justified by the need to maintain
public order.

In Western democracies broadcast
media (e.g., radio and television), unlike print media are subject to licensing.
The scarcity of band-width requires government regulation and depending
on the criteria used, can be an invitation to censorship. The U.S. Federal
Communications Commission for example has ambiguous rules regarding the
control of broadcast content. The use of certain four letter words deemed
to be indecent is prohibited. Although rarely exercised there is the possibility
of license revocation or non-renewal for violations.

After comedian George Carlin
used the word "fuck" in a late night broadcast in 1973, the offending radio
station received a warning letter from the FCC. The station then sued,
claiming that FCC regulations on indecent speech violated the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation 1978) upheld the FCC and
added an additional controversial, very broad censorship rationale known
as the “pervasiveness doctrine”. Regulation is required because, “the broadcast
media have established a uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all
Americans” and offensive and indecent material delivered over the airwaves
confronts the citizen, “not only in public, but also in the privacy of
the home”. Given the ease with which indecent communications may enter
the home, children must be protected from unwillingly or willingly encountering
them.

The elastic quality of a
standard such as “pervasiveness” could be used to justify censorship of
any form, even books and newspapers which also pervade society. Indeed
when Congress passed the Communications Decency Act in 1996 to regulate
internet content, a medium not characterized by spectrum scarcity, it was
argued that the internet pervades the home just as the radio and television
do and hence must be regulated. However the Supreme Court found this Act
unconstitutional in ACLU v. Reno in 1997. As the internet evolves, and
to the extent that it becomes a platform for delivering voice and video
communications that parallel traditional broadcasts, conflicts over the
appropriateness of its regulation will likely intensify.

In contrast are means applied
after the fact which seek to literally block or destroy communications
or to punish and deter. A classic example, likely seared on the memory
of anyone who has seen it on film, is the Nazi’s burning of books in 1933.
Materials originating from suspect sources that do not cooperate with censors
and/or are from outside a country may be categorically blocked. This may
happen through technical means as when the former Soviet Union electronically
jammed communications of Radio Free Europe or through the seizure of material
at borders. China has created an electronic wall around its internet to
block access to material from non-approved sources (e.g., among sites blocked
are the New York Times and CNN). Until the United States Supreme Court
(U.S. 1934) found that James Joyce’ Ulysses was a work of art, even though
it contained “dirty words”, U.S. customs authorities routinely seized literature
deemed inappropriate. The U.S. Postal Service prohibits the importation
and domestic transmission of certain forms of obscene communication. With
the 1934 decision we see the seeds of later Supreme Court rulings such
as in Miller (1973) which held that work could be prohibited only if taken
as a whole it had no redeeming value as art or science, was patently offensive,
and was not in keeping with local community standards.

The conflict between the
principle of no prior restraint and any modern society’s legitimate need
to control some communication has resulted in a variety of after-the-fact
sanctions (e.g., criminal offenses involving espionage, revealing national
secrets, obscenity, pornography, and incitement, injunctions to cease publication
and administrative sanctions, and civil remedies such as invasion of privacy,
libel, and defamation).

In the United States in 2000,
in contrast to Britain which has an Official Secrets Act, the disclosure
of properly classified information (with certain exceptions such as information
on the design of nuclear weapons and the names of intelligence agents)
is not a crime. However disclosing such information can result in losses
of security clearance, dismissal and fines.

Communication has a special
quality unlike most other legally regulated subjects. There is a paradox
and some uncertainty and risk for communicators, particularly those pushing
boundaries, in that while most communications can not be legally prohibited
before they are offered, once offered legal penalties may apply. The goal
here, beyond punishment for the infraction in question, is to warn and
deter others in the hope of encouraging self-censorship.

On a statistical basis the
major form of censorship in western societies is self-censorship. Publishers,
editors, and producers of mass communications are aware of borders not
to be crossed, even though there are many gray areas. Communicators generally
stay within the borders, whether to avoid prosecution or law suits, to
avoid offending various social groups, to keep the channels of government
information open, to please stockholders and advertisers, or out of their
sense of patriotism and morality.

Press and broadcast organizations
(e.g., The National Association of Broadcasters) and the major newspapers
and television networks have codes of ethics and voluntary standards. Between
a journalist writing a story and its’ appearance there are several levels
of review. The large broadcasting companies have internal units that review
everything from advertisements to program content before they appear. When
Elvis Presley appeared on national television for the first time, only
his upper body was shown, given censors’ concern with what was then considered
to be his prurient hip shaking.

Another prevalent non-governmental
means, often undertaken to avoid the threat of more stringent government
controls, involves voluntary rating systems. Here the goal is not to ban
the material but to give consumers fair warning so they can make up their
own mind. In the 1920s the Motion Picture Association of America created
a seal of approval for films meetings its standards. In 1968 it created
its rating system (expanded in 2000) for films based on nudity and violent
content. Some comic books, tv programs and music videos, video games, music
and web sites are also rated. This may be welcomed as consumer information
or seen as censorship that can chill expression and create an undesirable
climate, opening the door to greater control.

Technical means of information
control such as the v-chip which permits programming a television set so
it will not receive material deemed objectionable and various software
filters which screen web cites for sexual and violent content facilitate
private control. Such means are seen as more efficient than a heavy handed
government censor and more consistent with an open, highly heterogeneous
society. Those who want such material have access while those who might
be offended can avoid exposure.

There are degrees of censorship.
More common than outright prohibition, particularly in the case of erotic
material (which has received increased legal protection in recent decades
in the face of local legal prohibitions that appeared in the 19th century),
are time, place, manner and person restrictions –whether required by government
or undertaken voluntarily. Potentially offensive material is segmented
and walled off from those for whom it is deemed inappropriate. For example
pornographic material may be restricted to red light districts, to adults
and to late night programming when minors are presumed not to be watching,
children may be prohibited from certain concerts and stores may refuse
to sell them violent videos.

2.4 Limitations of Censorship

While government censorship
makes a symbolic statement, it is often rather impractical beyond the short
run, given the ubiquitous nature and continual improvements in mass communication
technologies and the leaky nature of most social systems. Of course computer
based technologies may make it easier to track whom an individual communicates
with and what material they access. But on balance, technology appears
more likely to be on the side of freedom of expression than the side of
the censors. The ease of modern communications, in particular remote forms
whose transmission can transcend national borders such as the radio, television,
fax and the internet and means of reproduction that are inexpensive and
relatively easy to use and conceal such as photo-copiers, scanners, audio
and video taping and printing through a computer, limit the ability of
censors. The internet, if available, has the potential to make everyone
a publisher. Its’ “many to many” communication through labyrinthian networks
(chat rooms, bulletin boards and e-mail) is far more difficult to censor
than the traditional “one to many” communication of the newspaper or television
station.

Given the expanding scale
of published material and the diffusion of communications technology that
began with the printing press, government and religious bodies are forever
trying to catch up. This is the case even in modern highly authoritarian
settings. For example in China during the Tiananmen Square protest, fax
technology kept China and the world informed of the events. In Iran the
fall of the Shah was aided by smuggled audio tapes urging his overthrow.
Strong encryption which protects messages also makes the censor’s task
more difficult.

Beyond technical factors,
censorship is often accompanied by demand for the censored material. Censoring
material may call attention to it and make it more attractive (the forbidden
fruit/banned in Boston effect). Black market demand for such material makes
it likely that some individuals will take the risk of creating and distributing
it, whether out of conviction or for profit. Potential communicators often
find ways to avoid or deceive censors whether using satire, parable, code
language, changing the name of prohibited publications and through simply
defying the law, as with the many underground “samizdat” presses that challenged
communist rule in Eastern Europe.

It is also the case that
sometimes, “the truth will out”. In a democracy illegitimate political
censorship in the name of National Security or executive privilege is vulnerable
to discovery –note Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair. In spite of its
dependence on government sources, the mass media may play an important
counter-balancing role here, watching those who seek to watch. Beyond investigative
reporters often using the Freedom of Information Act, such “dirty data”
may be revealed by the legal procedure of “discovery” in court cases, by
leaks, experiments or tests, whistleblowers and participants with a Dostoyevskyian
compulsion to confess and by uncontrollable contingencies such as accidents
(e.g., the crash of an airplane carrying Watergate “hush” money). The more
complex and important a cover-up or illegal conspiracy, the more vulnerable
it is to revelation. Even most legitimately classified government secrets
have a shelf life and must be revealed after 75 years.

In the long run it is also
difficult for censors to deny pragmatic outcomes and those which are empirically
obvious. This raises the intriguing sociology of knowledge question of
the relationship between culture with its significant, but not unlimited,
elasticity and a level of reality or truth that, when in conflict with
culture, may erode it over time. No matter what the power of the Church
to prosecute Galileo for heresy and ban his work, or the amplitude of its’
megaphone to assert the earth was flat, it could not suppress the truth
for long.

References

ACLU v. Reno, 1997

Aumente, J. 1999 “The Role
and Effects of Journalism and Samizdat Leading up to 1989” in Aumente J,
Gross P, Hiebert R, Johnson O, Mills D (eds.) Eastern European Journalism
Before, During and After Communism. Hampton Press, Inc., Cresskill,

New Jersey Freedom House
Press Survey 2000

Bok, S. 1989 Secrecy on
the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation. Vintage books, New York.